Tiger Woods-The worst a man can get !!!

Every time I decide that I will not again write on celebrities and their role as brand ambassadors, some one comes out of the woods and drag me into this.. Well there is a pun there and I must confess that it just came in a flow.. The topic is Woods and all the brouhaha that surrounds him as more and more women appear from the woods ( ohh the pun again) proving that the ace golfer had a huge fascination for holes, on the green turf and otherwise..

It’s a classic case of brands failing… Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods or simply Tiger woods was a brand by himself – a great performer and a real consistent one at that and no matter what now his play boy like image is, till last month he was the most revered icon for the sports world… … High performance delivered every time and for years now.. and that is the profit that his brands (the ones he endorsed) reaped from his aura.. Accenture for years bet on him and him only, portraying his ability to key putt or chip out of the rough and said “High performance delivered” ….Accenture has successfully used Woods to personify its claimed attributes of integrity and high performance.… Now Accenture was the first to forsake the star whose one flaw ( integrity was his other name !) seemingly has become the single most rallying point for the whole world…

It is not woods alone.. History of endorsements is laden with examples of erring celebrities putting brands that depend on them (some cases entirely on them) into disarray… Michael Jackson, and Mike Tyson , to Ben Johnson and Hanse cronje , Britney spears to as recently Micheal Phelps ( for smoking bong -a variant of marijuana, Kellogs dropped him from its endorser list) .. Phelps was dropped not withstanding the fact that the packets of Kellogs with his pics were an instant hit and became a collectors item..

For Accenture the golfer is "no longer the right representative" after the "circumstances of the last two weeks." Said the embarrassed Accenture…The move ends a six-year relationship during which the firm credited its "Go on, be a Tiger" campaign with boosting its image significantly…. Woods was an exception to the serious brand dilution that celebrities were going through.. Not that he was very choosy.. he came for Nike ,American Express, Gillette,General Motors' Buick, Electronic Arts and Tag Heuer watches but for Accenture he stood tall and almost the axis of its entire advertising and when in bad times, this sole dependence has landed the brand and its agency Young and Rubicam, in a tight soup.. they now want to replace all the Woods ads- Tvc’s , hoardings etc… but with what? No alternate strategy was ever in place, with Woods in ….

Woods was so special for his brand owners.. so much so that he appeared with the Nike Swoosh on Accenture ads, his golf bag features a Buick logo even while he endorses Nike and so on… whether this was a proof of brilliance of Nike's Tiger Woods arrangement that other advertisers didn’t mind the presence of the swoosh in their ads or was it simply because they had no option and if they want to use Tiger, they had to turn blind, is still debatable but in the new and changed Wood world it all seems irrelevant..

Gillette and its ads said “the best a man can get” and again Woods was the right match… Now that he has reached a point which certainly is not the best a man can get and where no man ever will want to be, brands one by one are dropping him like hot potato… this is the peril of celebrity endorsements ….

Forbes just a month back described tiger woods as “it's no secret that Tiger Woods is a marketer's dream. The appeal of the good looking, clean-cut, articulate, scandal-free golf whiz is just amazing”…. Now with this fall, which is more personal than professional, (Remember Woods haven’t cheated in his game of golf like a Hanse cronje or Ben Johnson) ads and brands that bet their entire purse on one person, simply because he/ she is a celebrity will think twice .. at least more and serious thoughts of clubbing such endorsement deals with moral clauses attached would be seriously talked about..

Not that a moral clause would have made a Woods to think twice every time he went for an escapade, but that the brands will have lesser losses , financially ,when the enodorses errs… (For the uninitiated, Morals clauses are standard contract terms that allow advertisers to renege on their deals with celebrities if the stars behave badly and ruin their ad plans — as Tiger has done.)…

Wishing Woods a recovery from this personal calamity and hoping to see him again in his turf, playing Golf and endorsing brands.. after all coming back can be more sweeter… and as per his own statement “You can always become better.”

Wishing all the brands that he was with, a smooth transition period …

CelebTrack- the game of endorser ranking!!!

Percept talent management and Hansa research has done it again – their second leg of the survey tracking India's most powerful celebrities which they call as Celeb Track….

CelebTrack first phase in April 2009, happened with inputs from 6,000 people, rated celebrities on attributes like media presence,physique, popularity, power of persuasion and exposure had put Amitabh Bachan as the most powerful celebrity in India scoring high in most of the attributes that was studied…

Now Celeb Track second phase has come out with the results and MS Dhoni has taken over others as the most liked celebrity in India ,thanks partly due to the survey which happened soon after IPL and partly due to the lackluster show by his other team mates and the over exposure of celebs like SRK ….Dhoni has pushed Shah Rukh Khan to the second place and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to the third. Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar have moved down many places compared to the last round of survey….

Ahem !

Well ….for the uninitiated, the research measured more than 400 celebrities across the country to generate a celebrity power score (CPS) by ranking them on the above said parameters .

The main facets of the latest study goes like this …

“Among the male actors, Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan feature in that order in the power list. Among the female actors, it is Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Katrina Kaif, Priyanka Chopra, Hema Malini and Kareena Kapoor. Among cricketers, the list includes MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid.

According to the wave 2 (phase 2)of the study, Salman Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Sania Mirza top their respective genres as the most recognised stars. In terms of likeability, Amitabh Bachchan replaces Salman Khan. The latter scores low on persuasion, exposure and image parameters. In terms of popularity, cricketers score among the classes while actors score higher among the masses.

The top five most persuasive stars are Amitabh Bachchan among male actors, Yuvraj Singh among cricketers, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan among female actors and Sania Mirza among other sports personalities. Higher classes and men get more influenced by the top ten stars, while the masses get more influenced by women, the study suggests.

While Sachin Tendulkar falls below Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh in terms of power of persuasion, he still holds on for products needing maturity and stature, such as financial products.

The respondents did not wish to read more about Rakhi Sawant, Mallika Sherawat and Sreesanth, while they wished to read more about celebrities such as Aishwarya Rai, Akshay Kumar and Sachin Tendulkar”

I wouldn’t agree with the rakhi thing here ( lol) but for sure sree santh I know more and enough.. Please stop glorifying the lil lad media folks!!!!..

Now brands can make informed and learned decisions, as per the percept team who is behind this work, and no longer the big brands who bet huge money on stars have to rely on gut feeling and anecdotal learning. Also, celebrities can yardstick themselves in comparison with their viewers and for that reason price their participation with brands.

Males and the ones of the higher SEC’s seems to be liking the cricketers more than the cinema stars but then cricket in India seems to be revolving around Dhoni, Tendulkar and Yuvaraj . And for me one shocker is the study fact which says that most people have heard most of the cricketers names but wouldn’t connect their faces with names.. if that is the case, what would happen to an Abhinav Bindra?

I mean people would have for sure heard the name but if they don’t know that he is HE when they se him on screen, will the brands that he endorse benefit?

It's all a game.. I mean the whole game of a celebrity choice…. Marketers, their agencies (like Percept) often ignore the key factors in the choice of the celebrity whom they select with fanfare and with all the logic of "his persona matching with our brands" et al….

Is the audience traits vis-à-vis persuasibility of the endorser taken care off?

Is there a study on the Monopoly of Communication source and its influence, Messages that is conveyed and its compatibility with the the belief /opinions/values of the receiver and the extent to which the Source is believed to have, expertise status/objectivity in the area of endorsement done?

Remember Rahul Dravid was a failure when he came for Bank of Baroda, so was Sania Mirza when she came for HP.. Dhoni and Mysore sandal is a classic case…

And in any case the risk of the celebrity becoming a scoundrel overnight threatens brands,,, not that it happens often but when it happens as percept would know it would be Horrible Mess…. Hansie Cronje was the key celebrity endorsers for Siyaram's J.Hampstead brand of clothing when he got caught in the max fixing scandal…..The campaign featuring Cronje had been running on the print, electronic and outdoor media and Siyaram and its advertising agency, Percept, watched in consternation and utter sadness as their celebrity endorser turned into an internationally detested sportsman during the night. Now that is quite an extreme case and let God forbid.. But the point is .. is it a safe bet to hang a brands future (entirely)to another brand whose brand value is quite volatile?

Having said that let me also add (quickly) that some study and some statistics is good... as the good old saying goes ,'something is better than nothing'!!!

***************************************************************

Celebrity circus.... Recession time Advertising....

Recession has hit all of us as different reasons, for most of us as an excuse or a pretext ....

It’s a mad rush for young blood in the celebrity endorsement scene….the recession that has hit the world so badly seems to have chucked the age old celebrity circus that ruled the roost .The Venerable guys who sat on the thrones of the Indian celebrity endorsement empire are all now slowly being shaken… some are already our and some are there in the queue…

Post March ,the new financial year has given the brand owners a lot of scope to rethink on the wrinkled faces that sold their wares… recession as some one said is a reason, and excuse and an apology for anyone to do anything….and here we are seeing the likes to the great SRK, Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukherjee, Sushmita Sen, Priety Zinta etc etc etc giving way to the likes of Katrina, Deepika, Priyanka, Genilia ( the stupid Cadbury’s perks ad is disgusting though!!) and the hot Dhoni who sells anything from Bikes to Fans…

The Pepsi youngistan campaign was a bit odd considering the fact that it was led by an SRK who was 40 plus… Recession has taken its toll on the deal when Pepsi refused to renew the contract and instead felt happy and YOUNG with Deepika, Ranbir Kapoor and Dhioni….Sachin got out from Pepsi as well, and so did Hrithik Roshan from Coke…

It seems the bad times for SRK is giving him sleepless nights.. Hyundai ended the long association with the Fauji Guy whilst Toyota said a sweet goodbye to Amir khan…Katrina Kaif has deseated the most beautiful Aishwarya in Nakhstara diamonds while she did the same with Sushmita in Pantene..L’ oreal is now with Sonam Kapoor, loss Aishwarya, and BSNL ( the amazingly rich and blissfully boring ) is now with Deepika, loss Priety Zinta…

Genelia displaced the old Rani from Perks ( her ads were better I guess ) and from Fanta (no comments !)…Asin ( the slim mallu girl) who shot to fame after Gajni is now with every brand and every market, so much so that her brand is under dilution than the brands that she endorses.. but who cares? When the sun shines, the clever ones make the hay!!!

Now this is definitely eye catching and attention grabbing but is it going to be a change that the ad industry was looking for?

The money part, is the same… considering the fact that a Deepika will charge no less than a Rani, if not more…

The old faces are too familiar and hence people may not have the charm in spite of the brand spending crores on the contract is an argument that I thought will stand closer to reality..But hey…. Isn’t Deepika over exposed…? Isn’t Dhoni seen everywhere? Every damn product and brand..? (Thank God he don’t sell Mysore sandal soap any more)….

Is this the change the ad world wanted?

Will this oscillation from Tom and Dick to Harry and Martha help??

The comfort zones in which the people in Advertising (the agency, the clients and the others) is often a no entry zone for others…. Its often known to everyone that there could be a better solution and a better option but what is it?

In normal circumstances, normal actions would do…. But in abnormal circumstances………., should people go MAD?

Need not be, for sure but people got to think really really abnormal… For me at least for God’s sake it doesn’t make a bloody difference whether it is Genelia, Deepika or Preity Zinta who cries, convinces ,cajoles ,seduces and stops me to buy what they sell…

I am living with a cut in my salary … Damn it !!!!

************************************************

Tail Piece :-

A rich, dying man, laid on his deathbed, requested to be joined at his bedside by his vicar, his bank manager and his lawyer.

He instructed them that he wished to be buried, when he finally passed away, along with all his money. He gave each of them fifty thousand pounds and asked them to throw the money on top of his coffin, in the burial plot, when he died.

A couple of days later the old man passed away and was buried within the week. At the wake, the three men were chatting and the vicar was suddenly overcome with guilt. He confessed to the other two that he had only thrown only half of the money onto the coffin, as the church needed urgent repairs to the roof.

The bank manager thought, ‘What the heck if we are having a confession,’ and told the other two men that he had also only thrown half the money in, as the ‘Credit Crunch’ was hitting hard and he needed some money for the bank to stop it going bust.

The lawyer jumped up and said to the other two, ‘I think that is a shameful act on both of you. I threw a cheque in for the full amount!”......

When Tennis Became Pretty After Kournikova

When Maria will win all the four grand slams this year, she will be gifted with 100 million dollars. But she's already one of the wealthiest sports person earning 25 million US dollars a year and she is one of the favourites of the advertising firms and media. She was one of the sexy faces which appeared in Sports Illustrated. Now as the Nike Ad says " She's so Pretty" . She's also featured in Palmolive Deodorant advertisement, Hyundai Getz and many others. She does not seem to be lost like "Anna Kournikova". Even though she knows, she has become popular among viewers, she doesn't agree herself to be just a "Sports Diva" , but a little more. But yet Sharapova era has begun.

But for us,

Celebrities cost a lot! They make it easy to maintain ad recall!

They grab the attention of the viewers more than the message!

Finally we pay the price for our admiration, by becoming lovers of those things that they use to carry themselves to differentiate from the crowd.